Fixing the World: Hoops and Hurdles at Hilly Field

Here is an interesting example of the bothersome hoops and hurdles thrown up against people pursuing sustainable thrival close to the land.

The land use planning bureucracy becomes a blockade for visionaries thinking outside the box. To prevail, new pioneers must plow through official requirements, bureucratic intercession, and neighbor reactions, while continuing to press forward with the demands of land stewardship, daily chores, and earning a living. New ideas don’t fit into the entrenched structure or paperwork flow.

The resulting pressure can only be withstood by resourceful people with ample patience, persisitence, and money, The first two can be mustered by choice, but money takes a long time to accumulate. This exacerbates a classist system that sabotages poor people from a thrival lifestyle, and instead keeps them treading water in the system, and pushes them toward various government services. Meanwhile, government complains that it has run short of money to provide those services,

Nothing is lost for the government workers, as they drag these cases out for a painfully long time, feathering their nests with fees at every juncture. In some areas, voters have pressed jurisdictions to pass rules in favor of sustainabile practices. But in others the police state is cracking down on people living according to traditions practiced by their elders for centuries.